


like clockwork

by izadreamer



Category: Original Work
Genre: Action, Epic Friendship, Gen, Humor, M/M, Non-binary character, Other, Steampunk, physics is ignored, so is common sense, vaguely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 19:07:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9251777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izadreamer/pseuds/izadreamer
Summary: When facing evil inventors, the best laid plans are the ones made up on the fly.“We could—y’know, y’know—just, kill him.”“Ooh,” Vivi says.“What?” Hau sounds very tired, all of sudden, tired and drawn out a bit like he wants to cry. “No. No. We can’t—that’s not—murder is illegal.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> A Christmas gift fic requested by a friend. The prompt was steampunk, with the main bad guy having tiny evil minions. I made them tiny evil robot monkeys, and it all went downhill from there. 
> 
> Let me know what you think!

It’s a gloomy day, the fog a little lower, the smog a little thicker. It hangs in the air like a solid weight, and despite the lack of wind the temperatures are chilling. The downtown buildings are thick and blocky and filled with people all trying to escape the cold, their new pocket watches shined and smooth from constant checking and coats edged with soot from the trains. The streets are covered in a thin dusting of snow all but obliterated by trampling feet.

At the end of the street sits a giant clock tower, not quite a part of the downtown but not quite separate, either—the base of the tower is dug deep like a basement and warm like a volcano’s heart. The furnace burns on eternal in its belly, the fiery light glancing off every bit of spare metal, from the pipes overhead to the creaking gears to the shrieking mechanical monkeys currently trying to eat Sera’s face.

“Damn thing! Get offa me!”

The monkey shrieks back delightedly, little copper claws digging into the skin of their cheek. Sera teeters backwards, arm flailing while the other does its best to keep the little demon back. Their back slams into a wall and their hand gropes blindly down the side, searching for any weapon at all.

Their fingers close around an abandoned pipe. Sera grins. The monkey shrieks in their face.

“BATTER UP,” Sera roars, and swings. A clang of metal on metal and the monkey goes flying through the air like a discarded doll. It hits the dirty ground with a resounding slam and shatters into a bunch of bolts and scrap metal with a lingering mechanical whine.

The other monkeys all turn, robot-like, to Sera. Sera just hefts the pipe like a bat and gives their very best maniacal grin, courtesy of Vivi.

“Eat scrap!”

The pipe swings down, a monkey goes flying. Ah, destruction, wherefore art thou been in Sera’s life.

Across the clock tower basement, Vivi whoops. “Go-o-oooo Sera! Nice hit! Swing again! Smash them into the scrap pieces of metal they are!”

Sera cackles, just a bit. Another monkey goes flying. “Go-o-ooo yourself! Man, who knew you were this good with a shotgun! We shoulda stolen you one ages ago!”

“I knew,” Hau interjects a little forlornly from where he’s fiddling with the elevator rig. “And I regret that to the end of my days. It was scarring.”

“Everything’s scarring to you, babe,” Vivi says, not unkindly. He shoots a monkey headed for Hau with a wink.

“Point,” Hau admits. “But that was an especially horrifying day. I’ll never look at butter the same way again.” He leans back, surveying his work.

“Almost done?” Sera calls.

He clicks his tongue, squinting at the mess of gears and bolts. “It’s—new. The Count’s stuff. Give me another few minutes.”

“Aye aye, captain,” Sera says, and swings their pipe again. The monkey goes crunch.

“Vivi’s the Captain, technically.”

“It’s an _expression_ , Hau, c’mon.”

Another wave of monkeys comes flying towards them, little mechanical tongues clocking and beady bolt eyes catching in the dim light of the clock tower’s furnace. Their heads are whirring on their bolts, around and round past any human limits of flexibility. Sharp teeth chatter, strong as any nutcracker, made to break bones rather than shells.

Sera bares their teeth right back and smacks them into the wall. Vivi shoots the rest, his aim as perfect as he always claimed. Hau never once looks up, trusting them to guard his back.

Finally he pulls away, ducking a wild sweep of Sera’s pipe. His eyes are bright beneath the grime smeared on his face.  “Okay. I think—it’ll probably work now.”

Without further prompting, Sera chucks the device strapped to their waist into the elevator shaft. Blue electricity sparks up the sides, and with a loud screech all the remaining robot monkeys are pulled into the shaft by the magnet.

“Here goes nothing,” Hau sighs, and wretches the screwdriver entrapped in the rig’s working hard to the right. A moment of silence. The glow dies. The shrieking starts up again, as the magnet releases the monkeys from its hold—

With a resounding screech, the elevator falls like an avenging angel down the shaft. There’s a loud crunch, and then blissful silence.

“Babe,” Vivi says, “have I mentioned, at all recently, how much I love you.”

Hau’s face burns red. His smile is small but pleased. “I could do with a reminder?”

“I love you.”

Ignoring the two, Sera leans over to make sure none of the buggers got free. “Clean work,” they confirm, jumping back to join them. “But man, did you see that? I almost died!”

“Those things are getting and more annoying every time I see them,” Vivi agrees. “They were cute. Now they are not.”

“Count Gerald’s updating them,” Hau confirms, also looking down to check. His shoulders are hunched with nervous anticipation. “He’ll probably make his move soon.”

“The bastard.”

Sera clicks their tongue. “This can’t go on. We have to do something soon. He’s getting better and we won’t always have a convenient elevator to serve as a—well. Impromptu weapon.”

Hau just sighs. “The monkeys are their own problem. We need—we need to take Count Gerald out of the equation, somehow. Otherwise he’ll just keep making more, making better ones.”

“I hate the mad genius inventor types,” Vivi grumbles. He kicks at a lingering bit a scrap. “Build machines! Build good machines! Why must they always go evil?”

Sera considers the elevator, the scrap, the pipe in their hands. There’s an idea forming in the depths of their mind, and Sera considers it, rolls it around their head like they would candy on their tongue.

“We could,” Sera starts, and waits until Vivi and Hau have focused their attention on them. “We could, y’know, just—well.”

“Well what?”

“We could—y’know, y’know—just, kill him.”

“Ooh,” Vivi says.

“What?” Hau sounds very tired, all of sudden, tired and drawn out a bit like he wants to cry. “No. No. We can’t—that’s not—murder is illegal.”

“Kill him just a little bit, then.”

Hau’s mouth works like he wants to make words, but his voice seems to be taking a bit of break. “No,” he says, faintly. Sera feels a bit bad for that. Poor Hau, with his morals and laws and self-righteous shit. Designated responsible guy—he held up well while it lasted. “No, No, I—no. That doesn’t. That doesn’t work.”

Vivi looks thoughtful, which doesn’t bode well for Hau’s lasting sanity. “What if,” he says. “What if we just. Harpoon the guy.”

“Harpoon,” Hau squeaks. “Har—har—”

“He’s got a giant steam ship—way up in the city. Like, we could just. Stab it. Watch him fall. All our troubles, solved!”

Hau makes a strangled sound, reminiscent of a dying cat. His face is an interesting mix of colors—pale, then tinged green. Sera watches with interest.

An idea occurs. “It might crash onto the city,” Sera points out, a little mournfully. “Damages, deaths…. We’d get sued.”

Vivi just shrugs. He doesn’t look particularly worried. “Shoot him out over the ocean?”

Sera considers this. “….Huh.”

Hau gags, a little, and leans hard against them both. “No,” he says. “No, we cannot—how will we get him there? What are we shooting him with? Also, _murder_ , oh my god. Oh, my god.”

“The mechanical monkey minions, too,” Sera points out. “What if they don’t go down with him? I hate those buggers; I’m not up to dealing with one thousand of the little creeps.”

“He’s literally trying to enslave us all through the power of new technology, babe,” Vivi says to Hau, which is a very good point, actually. “The monkey things, we can deal. Whack ‘em with a big stick or something, I dunno. And Hau— “

“No,” Hau says.

“Hau. Honey. My love.”

“I’m not. I’m not—breaking into his giant ship to let you control it, oh my god.”

“You’re the only one who knows machines! Our only hope!”

“Nope, nada, not gonna happen.”

Vivi takes Hau’s face in his hands, presses them nose to nose. Hau remains firm. Sera, despite themself, is a bit impressed. Vivi Morgue, made of rainbows and sparkles and cute things like that when he isn’t being cheerfully murderous, is a hard force to overcome. It’s totally futile, is the thing, but the fact Hau is holding up as long as he has is admirable.

“Love of my life,” Vivi announces. “Honey. The only joy I have left in this world besides bombs and bars, the second beat to my heart, the mate to my soul, the law to my unending chaos— “

“I love you too,” Hau says, clearly struggling. “But no.”

“—who never fails to steer me right and never lets me down, the reason I wake up every morning, the best person ever— “

“No,” Hau says, weakly.

“—so clever, so clever, the only hope, the true hero—my hero, love, my hero, we’re gonna do this and it’s going to be awesome and we’ll all live happily ever after, you got me?”

“It’s a terrible idea,” Hau says, but it’s not quite a no, and Sera stifles a smirk when Vivi starts cheering, releasing Hau’s face to pick him up instead and swing him around like they’re children.

“You! Are! The best!”

“We have no plan, I haven’t agreed to anything,” but Hau’s face is one of grudging determination and Sera knows they’ve won.

“Right, right,” Vivi says, finally putting Hau down. He pecks his cheek, absently, and this time Hau’s face burns bright red instead. “So, like. The harpoon thing. Ideas?”

“We can’t just harpoon a giant sky balloon; physics doesn’t work that way.”

“No,” Sera agrees, and crosses their legs at the ankles, leaning back against the metal wall to consider. “But—the docks, they have…. Whale harpoons, right? Or they know how to get them. Enough to piece the balloon, send it down—if we had someone on the water we could even get them to yank it more over the ocean…”

“We can’t just harpoon a giant air balloon,” Hau repeats, with great effort.

“Maybe,” Vivi says. “Maybe we just—steal one of those, y’know, circus cannons. The ones that shoot people. And have it shoot the harpoon instead.”

A pause.

“Oh my god,” Hau says, in a horrified whisper filled with deepest regret, just as Sera says, “Hell yes, let’s do it, let’s do the thing.”

“Great!” Vivi says. He and Sera share and high five and them, anonymously, they turn towards Hau.

Hau looks between them, back and forth, like he’s trying to find a shred of common sense, the poor fool. “It’s never gonna work,” he says.

“Have faith, honey.”

“We’re all gonna die.”

“We’ll succeed through the power of love,” Sera coos at him.

“And bombs.”

“And bombs, and harpoons, and cannons.”

Hau’s face works. He opens his mouth and closes it, and then he sighs, shoulders slumping.

“Fine,” he says, like a man signing his death warrant, but there’s the smallest of smiles curling at the edge of his mouth. “Fine, fine, I’ll break into the oversized ship for you and work the cannons and, and—whatever, whatever, I’ll do it.”

“Babe!” Vivi says, all cheer, and tackles him. Hau gags, but hugs back, and his usually serious face is split into a smile. Sera just gives a grin worthy of the title of maniac.  They’re going to do it. They’re really going to do it.

Count Gerald won’t know ever know what hit him.

 


End file.
